Happy 3/4th birthday!

Julia turned 9 months yesterday!  Hooray!

• Julia loves giving kisses!  We say, "Julia, give Mommy/Daddy a kiss!" or "Can I have a kiss?" or sometimes she just gives one out of the blue.  She opens her mouth and moves her head in quickly until her open, wet lips touch our cheeks.  She gets slobber all over us.  And it's delightful. :-)  Melts my heart every time!  She also kisses her baby doll is we ask her to kiss her baby, and while I was reading to her the other day, she kept kissing the baby in the book.  Too cute!
• Julia is such a bookworm!  She loves to sit back on our laps, listening to us read to her.  When a book ends that she's enjoyed, she often picks it back up and starts making noise until we start reading it to her again!  The other day, I read one book at least 5 times before we finally moved on to the next one.  Also, she's getting really good at turning pages.  We just loosen our grip on the next page and she grabs it and deftly turns it. 
• Sometimes, Julia crawls the "normal" way, but often, she plants her feet as she crawls, instead of crawling on her knees.  It looks really funny!  Also, she's gotten so fast!  Lately, she loves to trying to escape from the living area/study into the kitchen.
• We think Julia may be starting to connect words with the objects.  The connections aren't there completely, but we can see the wheels turning.  A couple nights ago in her bath, we kept showing her the rubber duckies and saying, "Duck!" as Julia repeated "Du!"  Then, the next morning, she saw a baby chick in the book she was looking at.  She pointed at it and said, "Du!"  Again, tonight in her bath, we wordlessly handed her a rubber ducky, and she excitedly said, "Du!"  We've noticed a few similar possible words.  May still be coincidences at this point, but may not be!  Exciting!  
• Some of Julia's recent favorite menu items: peaches, cherries, sweet potatoes, oatmeal, cottage cheese.  Usually if she's done eating she just locks her lips but on a couple occasions she sprayed food out of her mouth if she doesn't want it, which we try not to encourage by trying not to laugh... but it's hard!  She got peas all over me the other day, and I couldn't blame her... and just started laughing ;-)
• Julia loves to play peek-a-boo!  Lately, she has been grabbing blankets, clothes, boxes, toys, etc. and pulling them up over her head as we call out, "Where's Julia?" over and over.  When she finally reappears, we say, "Peek-a-boo!  There she is!" and Julia gets this huge, goofy grin on her face and starts the whole thing again.  So fun :-)  Aaron left work for a couple hours yesterday afternoon to take Julia to her Well Child Check-up, and he said she played peek-a-boo with his tie while they were waiting...ha!
• Julia cut a second tooth soon after the first one, but hasn't cut any since.
• Julia is still as active (and crazy!) as ever, drooling, knocking things over (especially her beloved blocks), clapping, making loud sounds, singing, spitting, giving raspberries (a particular favorite activity of hers while we're at church... of course!), wriggling, dancing, waving, panting, smiling, laughing, getting tickled, pulling up, banging on things, and exploring (and the one thing you don't want her to find or touch or eat is always the one thing she wants the most!).  She's a ball of energy and is a very happy little baby!  We love our Julia!

Don't you love the bib?!

Playing with a friend!

Bookworm!

Peek-a-boo!

Bang!  Bang!  Bang!

She doesn't need this quite yet...

Yummy block!

Happiest baby!

Nom nom nom lima beans!

Love.

Attempt at getting a pic of Julia in a towel ended up being a funny family photo.  And, yes, the toilet paper is from the C-Store.  Last pack, but can't complain since we haven't had to buy toilet paper in our over two years of marriage!  Many thanks, Uncle Stead!

I could not get a pic of Julia actually lying down in her crib this time for the life of me!  She's just too active.  So, I snapped one after she went to bed :-)